Can't Stop the Music

     For me, the holiday season has always been about the music.
     I have fond memories of stomping along in the snow, going caroling with the other kids from the neighborhood - back when it was still deemed safe to knock on strangers' doors and sing in their foyers for some cookies (and a few coins they'd put in the coffee can we'd conveniently brought along).

     Every year I'd look forward to going to Christmas Eve services at my Grandma's church, just so we could all sing "Silent Night" together, accompanied by a slightly out-of-tune organ, holding candles with those paper drip shields to protect our hands from the wax that would start to melt with wild abandon around the middle of the second verse.
     But, for sheer awesomeness, nothing beats being in a school holiday concert.
     Sure, I did the elementary school thing.
     We all did.
     Then in middle school we were all forced to choose our life path: band or choir.
     Mine was choir.
     Three years of the ridiculously high-pitched desecration of texts both sacred and secular ensued.
     My middle school choir had one boy who could actually sing.
     And I mean he could sing.
     He had classical training, amazing posture, and the ability to hit the high notes with pristine clarity. After getting a load of him, our choir director did the only thing she could do: make the rest of us his back-up singers. 
     That year we ditched Frosty and did numbers from Ahmal and the Night Visitors instead. It was probably the most culturally-edifying holiday concert our middle school had ever seen. Of course, most of us spent the evening singing "Ahhh...." and "Ohhh...." in hushed voices, so that the tone-deafness that pervaded our ranks would not overshadow il divo. Still, the applause was hearty that year. Yes, it was.
     Our high school choir was headed up by a dictator who demanded absolute allegiance from his minions. We bought fabric from him and were instructed which pattern to buy so all the girls' skirts matched perfectly. There were shoe rules (pumps, black, one-inch heel, no embellishments) and hideous red poly-blend sweaters.
     He was a perfectionist of the first order, and the only reason I'm still alive to type this is that no one would rat me out when I blurted, "Oh, shit!" after coming in a measure too early during a noontime concert at a shopping mall.
     Our holiday program was entirely sacred, much of it in Latin. We'd start practicing for it in early-October. All that lead time was necessary for the non-Catholics in the room to learn a new language, as well as the notes to sing.
     One year he went all Benjamin Britten on us - not a pretty sight. Totally fucked up my ability to spell for half my junior year.
     And when a Norwegian exchange student with a glass-shattering soprano showed up, we all found ourselves singing in her native tongue too. Man, the crowd lapped that one up like dogs.
     Every year, we ended the program with the same song: "Beautiful Savior" (Finally, something in English!).
     The school I teach at has been holding their holiday concerts this week, and I've been thinking about those adults out there in the crowd. Sure, they're all proud of their whipper-snappers up there belting it out, but it does get to be a long night, doesn't it?
     I recently realized that my parents stopped coming to my holiday concerts when I learned how to drive. Yes, once I had a way to get my sensible-pump/fugly-sweatered self to the venue without them, they were outta there. Can't say I blame them, though. I really can't.
     Now I get my holiday groove on singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with my daughter. As I watch her stand in the middle of the living room, belting it out solo, smiling proudly, and hitting her marks on all the hand gestures that go along with it, two words enter my mind: show choir.
     And it's a fate I am more than willing to accept.
     Until she can drive.